Family life

Snapshot: Sheila – star of a photo mystery

Teresa Hall's mother, Sheila, during the second world war

Towards the end of her life my mother developed dementia, and the cache of memories she had passed down to me, from the stories she once told and the boxes of photographs, were then all that remained of her long-ago life. She had written names and places on the back of many of the photographs but, alas, I cannot now be certain that she always got it right.

This photograph, one of many such fragments of her life found in one of the boxes long after her death, particularly intrigues me. Where was it taken, when, why, by whom? There are some clues, but still unanswered questions. Unusually, there were no notes in my mother's familiar hand on the back, nor any details of the photographer.

The location is both unmistakable and unremarkable – the hallway of the flat in Palmers Green, north London, where I spent my childhood. The patterned tiles on the floor, the stained glass in the front door, the painted Anaglypta paper below the dado rail, the round electric light switches, even the bell on the inside of the front door, which rang when you turned a butterfly shaped handle on the outside, are all so familiar, so much a part of my growing up. I can even make out the very bottom of the house number – 23 – on the frosted glass above the door. Only the blackout curtain hanging by the door and the "Night War Worker Asleep" sign are unknown to me – both long gone by the time I was born in 1950.

The woman is my mother, Sheila, beautiful and younger than I remember her, wrapped in a star-patterned towel that triggers a sudden, intense memory for me. I am standing, dripping and shivering, on the cold lino of the Palmers Green bathroom, just out of the big enamel bath, pleading, "Dry me, Mummy, I'm freezing", and then sitting on her lap, warmly wrapped in that same towel with its pale green stars.

My parents, who were both actors, had moved to Palmers Green during the 1930s. Sheila Raynor, as she was, joined John Clements's repertory company at the Intimate Theatre. The boxes of photographs contain a treasure trove of costumed images of her at that time – as Beth in Little Women, opposite John Clements in Lady Precious Stream, in Major Barbara and The Barretts of Wimpole Street, to name just a few.

When war broke out, my father joined the army but my mother continued to play at the Intimate for much of the war, sometimes sleeping underneath the stage during air-raids, with the rest of the cast. Often other actresses, unable to get home after the show, would stay the night at number 23, which was less than 100 yards from the stage door. Were these the sleeping "war workers" who were not to be disturbed?

Towards the end of the war, Sheila joined the Entertainments National Service Association and, in 1945, toured France and Belgium with Sir Cedric Hardwicke's company. She also appeared in several wartime public information films – could that, I wonder, have any connection to the "war worker" photograph?

After the war, as local theatres closed, Sheila worked first in radio and later in television and films – reading the Morning Story on the radio, doing voiceovers for TV commercials, appearing in popular dramas, including Emergency Ward 10, Coronation Street and Z Cars and playing small parts in films, such as the housekeeper in The Omen. Her role as Alex's mother in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange – "Dear old Stanley made us run up the stairs so we were out of breath but proper actors can do that anyway" – might have heralded a late flowering to her career, had "dear old Stanley" not banned it from further showing.

She had a long career and went on working until she was more than 80, when sadly she became unable to remember her lines, no longer the vibrant young woman captured in a starry towel by an unknown photographer all those years ago. Teresa Hall (Pyott)

Playlist: My dad and the Who for ever

My dad, who suffered a brain injury in 1994, now has no short-term memory, so spending time with him can be difficult. Once he was full of banter and quick-witted retorts, but now conversation is usually one-sided. Unless, that is, you strike up one of the time-tested topics such as, a) his first girlfriends, b) his teen musical duo, the Bright Ideas, or c) the Who.

Though encephalitis ravaged so much of my dad's brain, it left him his love of the Who. So when stuck for conversation, I'll journey with him back to the days when his 17-year-old self would carefully slip the shiny black vinyl of a new Who 45 out of its cardboard sleeve, and set it gently on the turntable. Seconds later, my dad's favourite Who song, I'm a Boy would blare out, rattling the Sunday china in the Rich household.

But not everyone in the house was a Who fan – especially not my dad's dad, Bill. So unimpressed was my grandfather by the noise levels coming from my dad's bedroom that on one occasion, he stormed upstairs and stamped all over my dad's prized possession – his record player.

Although I'm sure it couldn't have been this perfectly timed, I love to imagine it all happened as the lyrics, "My name is Bill, and I'm a head case" rang out. Amy Rich

We love to eat: Marrow cargoes

Ingredients

1 medium-sized marrow

1lb fresh minced beef

1 medium-sized onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic (passed through a press)

4oz potato, peeled and cubed

2oz mushrooms, chopped

3 medium-sized tomatoes, chopped

1 tsp mixed herbs

salt and pepper to season

2 tbsp parmesan cheese

Trim the marrow at each end and peel it. Cut lengthways, then widthways into four boat shapes and scoop out the seeds. Place in boiling water for five minutes only and drain. Put it in an ovenproof dish and set aside. Cook the mince, onion and garlic in a large pan, stirring for 10 minutes. Add all the other ingredients (apart from the cheese) and cook for a further 10 minutes, stirring now and then. Pile the mixture into the marrow boats and sprinkle on the parmesan. Bake for 40 minutes at 180C or gas mark 4. Serve with green salad.

I first tasted marrow as a small child on a visit to an elderly distant relation on my father's side. Aunt Nora and her husband, George, lived at the coast in a much grander house than ours, and lunch was a formal affair. I had never seen marrow before and ate it as was expected of me. It was much later in life that I realised that marrows are easy to grow and need very little attention apart from regular watering.

As a divorced mother with two young children, I bought an ex-rental property, which was a bargain as both the house and its small garden had been thoroughly neglected by tenants. The consensus was that what passed for a lawn needed to be rotivated and the garden begun again from scratch. This was beyond me. My son, then aged seven, was very wary of the garden, as the grass was taller than he was and he was not ready for the jungle experience. There was also a wooden shed, which my daughter believed was inhabited by a witch.

I tamed the garden one little area at a time, growing runner beans, tomatoes and, best of all, marrows (see my photograph above) which the children were keen to water and nurture, tucking clean straw beneath them. They soon discovered that food, even marrow, tastes good if you have had a hand in its cultivation. But after all, what's not to like about marrow? Even the most sceptical marrow-eater can be won over by our family recipe for marrow cargoes. Carolyn Traynor

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We will pay £25 for every Snapshot, Playlist, We love to eat or Letter to we publish. Email family@theguardian.com or write to Family Life, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please don't send original photographs but do include your address and phone number